lmfao

@andyjohnsonman it's the paradox of enlightenment isn't it. They say desire/clinging is the root of suffering. But how does one stop desire if it is the case they must desire to stop desire to do so? It's a double bind. A way to frame this is to say, the reason you aren't better is the same reason you want to be better. We're constantly in this game of trying to one up ourselves or one up the universe, it's at the core of our ego. But if you ask "how do I stop trying to one up myself" my response might be "why do you want to know?". To increase your consciousness is to realise how you get in your own way. The more I meditate the more I feel this. Mindfullness in some sense is about trying to deliberately make an effort to make yourself open up more and more. Unconsciousness can be likened to needless muscle contraction. You just have to stop the activity that you yourself are doing. This is why high consciousness is described as being something effortless, although to try and get there it can feel anything but effortless as you meditate and make the effort to do emotionally difficult things. But that's normal.

@Joseph Maynorif there is an aspect of your psyche that that you want to repress in a stage blue manner, you will also be wary of that aspect in other people and will imagine its presence in places that it is not. I don't think this is a particularly profound nor is it about all general cases of projection. I mean projection is a way in which you attribute false qualities and characteristics to something. Negative judgements are all about ego and blah u know the rest of the story. What I've said so far is all too general/non-specific to contribute to this discussion I think. On a tangent, now that I think about it abstraction in its effort to cover all scenarios and generalities can "fail" to adequately give info about a specific situation. In trying to account for everything you in some sense account for nothing. Kinda reminds me of the sensation vs intuition dichotomy in MBTI, where both dimensions complement each other. Or reminds me of the universal/democratic/fair-minded cognitive axes vs Contextual/monarchical/goal orientated cognitive axes.

@RichardY Zoomers watch Tik Tok that automatically makes them catatonic and brain dead

I really liked this. "If you prepare for an attack from a specific direction, and it comes from some other direction, you have to withdraw from the direction in which you expected it and send your energy in another direction and that takes time. So what you do is go around with a mind of no expectation" Very applicable for life in general. A mirror reflects light instantly, it doesn't pause or delay. If you clap your hands, the sound comes out immediately. In such a way, it's possible for you to act without hesitation. "If you sit, just sit. If you walk, just walk; but whatever you do, don’t wobble." Since we aren't used to acting spontaneously, we do so unintelligently when we first try to do so.

It's hard to put into words, I think its sort of like a 6th sense that everyone has. Its probably at least partially explicable by some sort of subconscious processing your brain does. Yeah I think that the vibes you feel in a room are the sum of everyone there, but it's very easy to get mentally preoccupied/unsettled by one or two flavours there. How does it actually feel like? I think are two things going on. One thing that goes on is that I feel like I get a hunch/intuition of the temperament/emotions of another person. What sort of state they are currently are in.But the second thing which goes on is my reaction to what I feel. Like "this atmosphere is bad" or "I must get away from this person". Since I have anxiety, I can have a heightened emotional/physiological. Sometimes my physiological/emotional response is a few times larger than what I actually have a hunch about, so I wish to be careful that I'm not projecting false meanings to these experiences. I think when it comes to absorbing it, i think it's just that people are in different modes/frequencies and you can choose whether or not you want to artificially imitate that frequency and become more similar to that other person. Sometimes the choice isn't fully yours, and the vibe of a room can feel overwhelming. On the somewhat rare occasion you encounter a "frequency" you like it feels good to embrace the vibes someone else emits.

@Shadowraix yessssssssss top tier anime.

@Patrick Lynam This is an interesting topic. I've often wondered whether labels such as empath or sociopath are applicable to me. In the end I think no such labelling was useful for me. I don't know whether I'd use the label empath, but I'm maybe a "highly sensitive person". Absorbing people's vibes and the atmosphere has always been a very palpable experience for me. Like the mood and vibe of the room, yeah that's definitely a thing. However, I should be careful about the degree to which I project false meaning onto my on experiences. One thing I will say though, on the other hand I'm very capable of being ruthless. And I think all people can find both these opposing natures within them.

@Shadowraix Yeah there's basically no adequate way to convey direct experience so I just avoid using it sometimes because people won't get what you're saying

@123456789 To verify logic is true you would have to use something other than logic. So what can you do?

Could be "yellow", idk/idc but this video makes a lot of good points. Some people are ignorant to the fact that some religious fundamentalists actually believe in their religion wholeheartedly. They know for a fact that heaven and hell exist, and know for a fact how one is to get to each of them. Anyone who's been sucked into this type of thinking before can understand.

I've noticed theres a difference in how energy feels in your first hand experience vs how science has chosen to define energy. Like in your first hand experience, it feels as though theres just this spontaneous happening that you did nothing to create and yet exists anyway. It's as though theres energy coming from nothing. But in physics, energy is described by saying the work done by a constant force is equal to the magnitude of the force multiplied by the displacement along the line of action of the force whilst the force is acting. As a student I've wondered why this definition has been chosen for energy. It's interesting. One thing though, whatever standard you choose for defining something you create an entire framework with circular definitions and you might forget there are circular definitions.

https://www.amazon.com/Kriya-Secrets-Revealed-Complete-Techniques/dp/1479109517 this book for kriya Yoga is the one leo reccomends. Just do both sds and yoga man. I tend to do just a little yoga before normal meditation. Yoga is good, I just don't understand the hype of it relative for Leo to have said in the past he thinks Yoga is more effective than regular meditation. But that's just me.

I have liked Joe rogan, Sam harris, Jordan peterson from this list. Rubin, shapiro, molyneux? Nahhhh.

@Leo Gura @Nahm@mandyjw ?, thanks for the responses

I've often bought into the idea of unconfitional happiness being at least theoretically possible. I was travelling aboard recently in Africa and was/am extremely sick whilst doing a lot of moving around. This was a source of suffering. I was in the sahara desert on a camel, being very cold and at one point my tiredness from travelling with illness made me delirious to the point where I thought I was literally going insane and had lost my mind completely. My sense of reality was stripped away in the most negative way possible, I had an emotional breakdown from all the fatigue of travelling with a painful illness. I slept it off thankfully. The experiences I had were so painful, I find it hard to believe that I could have dissolved all of it. And another thing, I see these beggars and poor children in the street and just wonder why there is just so much absurdly amounts of suffering. How is this infinite love? Maybe when you're suffering is mild and you have an OK health you can sense the beauty of reality and see through the illusiveness of thoughts but how is someone less fortunate to be happy? Has God just destined some people to be born in lives of absolute misery? Is all of this suffering supposed to be good?

@mandyjw the sickness has made me more grateful for my health. All in all I would probably do something similar again, I did have some fun. Looking back it was a funny experience I suppose.

weeeeeee. Even though I've never taken a psychedelic this must be what its like.

@moon777light I'm sure you've had glimpses, everyone does. Everyone progresses at different speeds and its all about what you want from the practice that matters. It's a saying in zen or something that satori can take 3 seconds or it can take 3 decades. I've been meditating daily for more or less 14 months, but I've probably missed at least a 1/3 of those days maybe more. I had my first non-dual glimpse meditating on a cold bus strangely enough. It was my third or so time meditating, but it was still profound to me because of how much of a shock it was to me. I would move my arm, turn my head, blink and realise that it wasn't me who was doing all those things. I haven't had many glimpses from meditating, but it does feel like purification. Probably a handful of "glimpses" but there are more muted monkey mind and higher consciousness states.

@zunnyman Kriya yoga and normal meditation, you know how it is. @Inliytened1 @Shadowraix @pluto @Hellspeed @moon777light ?

Is there some complex mechanics to it worth understanding? From my perspective, regardless of the situation in regards to whether or not you know what your trauma is, being mindful and surrendering to your emotions its the solution. The main thing I wonder is, should people go out of their way to try and dig into what their trauma is? How would you go about digging? Obviously there might be some trauma you're quite conscious of. But I wonder, is there such a thing as hidden trauma that you've completely forgotten about? As I understand it, trauma may or may not be similar in its expression to PTSD. I know that PTSD forms of trauma cause you to be anxious. And our definition for what the traumatising "event" is can be quite broad, such as a set of life experiences spread throughout a period of a few years.So with all trauma, something unexpectedly negative happens to you and since your brain does not want to consciously explore your feelings and thoughts, your brain adopts a bunch of neurotic circuits out of a primal low consciousness fear? So is all negativity and neuroses caused by trauma? Is this all shadow work is about? Trauma, Karma, neuroses, body memory, the shadow, all these terms seem to basically mean the same thing. Ofc we're using a very broad definition of trauma. I suppose the real reason I made this thread was to see if there was a get rich quick scheme to finding trauma.

@Leo Gura Thanks for the tip. I can tell about at least a few trauma I have.

@Pouya One way you might come across nothing would be to say to yourself "Whats creating this present moment experience"? What could be the answer to the question if your entire reality is the present moment? Or maybe you should self inquiry of some sort. Like asking yourself "what am I?". What makes the thoughts that pop into you head different the sounds you hear outside? What are the origin of things you call yourself and the origin of things you call other?

@Cocolove 14 months or so. I hope so

@Jkris There are too many good ones:

@Jkris Yeah you seem to get what to do. I'd say that if you're looking for someone who can best point towards non-duality with words, I'd reccomend alan watts. He has many good videos on YouTube. I can link a few if you want. Terms like "surrender", "awareness", "resistance" can be very important to use when talking about mindfullness/non-duality yet these terms cannot be adequately defined. I've found myself wondering what is "awareness" and what is "attention". I can't tell what exactly suffering and low consciousness is. If you're in a higher consciousness state, it's as though you have an effortless attention (which is almost a paradox) for all the contents of your consciousness. But in low consciousness state, there's some sort of constriction of your attention/awareness or at the very least the feeling that there's some sort of constriction on your experience. And then there's obviously thoughts which are central to everything. The problem I have is this. By very virtue of the fact that I have a low level of consciousness at the times I have a low level of consciousness, it's very hard to "figure out" how low consciousness functions. Figuring out the relation betweenï thought, awareness, attention is confusing and what's all the more confusing is that once you're in a high consciousness state none of this talking matters at all and there are no problems. One good way to think about reducing your suffering, is that you realise that the thoughts which are in your head are of the exact same origin of all things external to you. The origin of everything you do and the origin of everything that happens external to you are the same. If you realise that the external and internal and one, the feeling that life is a drag and effort will dissappear. Reality in its essence is just an uncaused, spontaneous hapenning which literally "comes from" nothing. The present moment is all you have and all you will ever have, and you didn't have to do anything to create this moment. One experiment which might work for you. Listen to your thoughts just as if they were noise in the external world.